This invention relates to a collator, particularly to a horizontal type collator.
As is known in the art, the horizontal type collator is often employed in order to collate relatively thick section consisting of, for example 16-pages or 8-pages. In the horizontal type collator, a plurality of sheet stacks to be collated are transversely aligned in a collation sequence and a plurality of sheet receiving sections are transversely arranged in the collation sequence for receiving sheets from the sheet stacks. And a sheet feeding mechanism is provided for each sheet feeding mechanism. Then every sheet feeding mechanism is simultaneously driven so that sheets are fed at the same time from every sheet stack to the sheet receiving sections. Such sheet feeding operation of the sheet feeding mechanisms is repeatedly performed. Furthermore, the sheets received at the sheet receiving sections are transported to the respective next higher order sheet receiving sections synchronously with the sheet feeding operation. Thus the complete set of sheets can be collated at the highest order sheet receiving section.
However, the more the number of the page becomes, the longer the collator becomes in the transverse direction, so that a larger space is required for instaling the collator.